The space race is on, and Chrysalis is determined to win it. With an earth pony test pilot and a hive full of brave-but-dim changelings, can she be the first pony on the moon? Inspired by Kerbal Space Program.

Humanity's space exploration ultimately took the form of billions of identical probes, capable of building anything (including astronauts themselves) upon arrival at their destinations. One lands in Equestria. Things go downhill from there.

Harry Potter, after a beating by Dudley and friends — with the help of a real gang member — wishes he had somewhere safe to go, and starts crawling home. He ends up in Equestria. The CMC find him. A year later, an owl brings his Hogwarts’ letter!

A new jumpgate is discovered, or rather a very old and decayed one that had been brought back online. House Hawkwood sends a bold explorer through to discover what riches await on the other end. He did not expect equines to be the result.

This is a sequel to Kris Overstreet's "The Maretian". Mark Watney, now free at last from Mars, is having to stay on Equus while he recovers from Martian gravity. What new adventures await until he can return home, and what new feelings will emerge.

After a successful battle for planet Udow-2, Commander Falcon and his brothers are sent to another planet where they will fight Separatists. However not everything goes as planned and a completely new adventure appears in front of him.

The space race is on, and Chrysalis is determined to win it. With an earth pony test pilot and a hive full of brave-but-dim changelings, can she be the first pony on the moon? Inspired by Kerbal Space Program.

Twilight Sparkle's experimental interplanetary drive has malfunctioned, stranding Starlight Glimmer, Spitfire, Cherry Berry, a changeling and a dragon on a hostile planet in another universe. With limited food supplies, very little magic, no communications with home, and no way to leave the planet, they must survive until somepony rescues them.

Fortunately they crashed right next door to another creature with the exact same problem- a creature named Mark Watney.

They're going to science the buck out of everything- and do whatever it takes to survive Mars and get everybody home.

Eagerly looking forward to this. That many more hungry, respirating, capable bodies will seriously throw off the timetables of survival. Hopefully they brought their own stored supplies as a housewarming gift. There's just the matter of what prolonged magic starvation does to organisms from their universe, and how the heck they're going to pull off a high-D teleport in a universe that, if they're extremely lucky, only has next-to-no magic.

I'm really looking forward to seeing where this goes. Without magic, the situation will go from bad to worse for all involved as there are now six people to pull resources instead of just Mark by himself. Also, it'd be interesting to see how they react to his more insane ideas (like how water was made), or how much swearing he does compared to their PG swearing.

I can't really see them surviving some of the problems that Mark ran into, and some of them were caused by wear and tear which will only get much worse with 6 instead of just 1 active astronaut. I can only hope magic and the resources of their ship can avoid a truly Bad End.

Though humans on Earth seeing these magical aliens in space suits through a remote camera would be the most hilarious thing I can imagine. How would they even respond to something like that?

"So..." Starlight looked the spell up and down. "Starswirl the Bearded's Faultless Portal Spell put us here? How in heaven's name can this be considered faultless?!"

"Well." Twilight squirmed a little, but felt forced to defend her favorite theoretician. "The spell refuses to open up a portal unless conditions on both sides of the portal match. So when you're on a rich, healthy world, you can't accidentally open a portal into a desolate, deadly vacuum."

"And when you're stranded on a near lifeless world, without hope of rescue?" Starlight looked out the window at the small fleck of metal far away on the Maretian plain.

"Yes." Twilight smiled a frantic gritting of teeth. "See, it worked perfectly!"

Off to a good start. It'll be interesting to see in what ways magic will (or won't) affect their circumstances. The implication seems to be that their magic does regenerate, but slowly, which leads me to wonder just what they're actually capable of.

This could be intresting, given Ive read the book but not seen the movie.

Dont potatoes do really well in manure? Also, horse hair etc was used in wattle and daub for building materials? So say horsehair reinforced ice and you have concrete? If the magic is low, can the dragon still eat martian rocks for sustenance, and if so, what it dragon waste product?

You know, the Sparkle Drive reminds me of the Liir Stutter Drive from 'Sword of the Stars', which works "by teleporting the entire ship in tiny spatial increments of a millimeter or so", making faster if its drive can manage more teleports per second.

8644362 I am curious myself to see how the Equestrian characters will react to 70's television.

8644403 It would have been, yes, if the ponies had thought of that, but they thought the standard failsafes in the teleportation spell would be enough.

Also, Starlight was the first one to feel the effects because, as a unicorn, she actively taps into and manipulates her magic reserves. For pegasi and earth ponies it's not usually a conscious act. And Starlight Glimmer's first instinct for solving any problem, from "the roof is caving in, we're all about to die" on down to "the sugar bowl is inconveniently far away from me on the table" is to use magic. So she used her reserves up almost immediately after the drive crashed, and spoilers- it won't be the last time.

8644679 So I'm told, though I've never read/watched/played/whatever Sword of the Stars.

8644747It's a 4X (aka Civilization-style) space game where you try to conquer the galaxy as one of several alien species. Among other differences, each race has its own FTL travel method. Humans, for instance, have to find and travel along jump nodes, while the Hivers slowboat to new systems at merely relativistic speeds, then set up a gate; their ships can travel anywhere in the gate network in a single turn.

8644747I persume that basic teleport spell pushes atoms out of the place where you teleport or the other way around if the object is too dense. The ship shouldn't even need to avoid microasteroids. The teleportation spell will simply push them out of the way or will be pushed out of the way when reapearing. And they teleport so fast that microasteroids are simply moving too slow to be danger for the ship.

8644962 The book has a lot more detailed science, several more Watney-almost-dies moments, a lack of Iron Man beyond the suggestion, and a total lack of full-service bathrooms in the Ares IV MAV. Among other things.

Unhappy dragon at least has better tasting wrapper than contents of MRE, but would be even unhappier if he was Kirk. Three alien females and nothing going on.

Depending on the camera resolution etc, accessing GOCHE ion drive atmosphere flight data, telepphoto optics, they should get not just better than a metre resolution, but compensating for relative angular velocity by pivoting the camera, taken from spy planes data, they could get down to inch per pixel res or so. But that would be like 256 Meg camera, 18 inch diameter optics, 100km altitude ? Then again, theres a neat trick with multiple slipped fast photos computing the phase difference between them to increase the effective resolution, sort of like super sampling?

I forgot the overall delta V of the Hermes, but Ive read Azimovs Lucky Starr, and Clarkes 2063, and so even when an ion drive can give you a short flight time direct accross the solar system, like the local road network, theres this horrendously impassible structure in the way that just has to be avoided. And it aint Granny Weatherwax.

It will be typical that the magic exudate of the Equestrians will keep causing compact dust devils, preventing direct detailed viewing, but could end up making Wells? style writing communication just by wandering out for a few letters.

Also, he’s not a quadrupedal ungulate, he’s a bipedal reptilian, standing on two long rear legs that would be almost human except for a few minor differences, like clawed feet, scales, plantigrade legs - you know, trivial stuff like that.

Wait, are you sure you don't mean digitigrade? The sentence structure suggests that his plantigrade legs are counted in the list of minor differences, but humans are plantigrade, too.

You are really nailing Mark Watney's voice in the log updates. I think the Hermes crew being aware of something off from the very beginning of the story, before they even left Mars, puts an entirely different spin on the rest of the story. Their options are still really limited, but there is the potential for near-instant communication between Hermes and Mars while Earth talks to Hermes on a slower line.

8645684Ares III, Houston. What do you mean, you have a pony? Everyone since Apollo 11 knows that only the Moon has a pony on it.

8645897I hope this continues to do well in the feature box, too. I've chipped in a little on Patreon as well, hope it helps. It's certainly past time for me to start supporting an author whose work here I've been enjoying so much.

Well, he got half of one name, so he's already decoded (assuming Equestrian has all the same words as English) almost six thousandths of a percent of their language! Good progress, at this rate he'll get done in only 470 years or so.

I find it amazing that on Chrome for mobile, there is an Articles for You section right below your most visited sites when you open a new tab. I don't know how it works, but it recommended this story the moment it came out, and I can't believe that it's something I'm actuslly interested in. The ladt time it did this, it also recommended The Musings of an Old Fool by Monochromatic, which I also plan to read very soon.

I guess Google Chrome is on it's shit. I don't even need to be on site to find good stories.

Spitfire is my favourite pony so I am so glad you included her. I hope she finds something to smile about sooner or later

I will be eagerly reading this each day when it updates. It's one of those things where I could easily see 3K+ words of chapters building up when I miss a few days, but right now I'd happily read a lot more I've only seen the film of the Martian, but as the plot changes anyway I imagine that'll be ok. I definitely recognise how you've captured Mark's character, he was engaging enough on his own and imagine he will be just as good when surrounded by stranded ponies.